US judge denies Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘frivolous’ bid to throw out conviction

A US national justice rejects Maxwell’s claims that recently released Epstein files could assistance overturn her felony convictions.

A United States national justice has rejected the bid from Ghislaine Maxwell, erstwhile woman and longtime subordinate of Jeffrey Epstein, to propulsion retired her 5 felony convictions, calling the claims “meritless” and “frivolous”.

In a 67-page sentiment made nationalist connected Tuesday, Judge Paul Engelmayer denied Maxwell’s post-conviction situation to her 5 felony convictions.

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Maxwell, 64, is serving a 20-year condemnation for helping the precocious financier Jeffrey Epstein enlistee and sexually maltreatment underage girls for implicit a decade. She is eligible for merchandise successful 2037.

She was convicted by a jury successful December 2021 connected 5 felony counts. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict successful 2024, and the Supreme Court declined to perceive a further entreaty past October.

Maxwell, representing herself, submitted her petition nether Section 2255, the national statute allowing convicted defendants to situation their sentences. Engelmayer, who did not preside implicit Maxwell’s archetypal 2021 trial, called her filing a “lengthy and rambling petition”.

Much of Maxwell’s petition leaned connected records released nether the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), a instrumentality passed with near-unanimous legislature enactment successful November 2025 that forced the US Department of Justice to marque the files public.

Maxwell claims her law rights astatine proceedings and sentencing were violated, and that the materials released arsenic portion of the EFTA enactment this claim.

Engelmayer recovered that the worldly worked against Maxwell alternatively than for her. “To the grade it is relevant,” helium wrote, “far from exculpating her, it incriminates her oregon reinforces the correctness of the ineligible rulings Maxwell challenges.”

The justice besides highlighted an evident contradiction successful Maxwell’s ain account. On claims related to a sentencing enhancement, which accrued her situation word due to the fact that prosecutors argued she had a enactment relation successful Epstein’s scheme, her petition argued she had “largely exited” Epstein’s household by 2002.

But successful a July 2025 interview with then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell described continuing to negociate Epstein’s properties and unit years later.

On claims that Maxwell was unfairly singled retired portion different associates of Epstein went uncharged, Engelmayer noted she had not implicated immoderate different idiosyncratic successful the kid enactment maltreatment strategy and does not adjacent concede Epstein’s culpability successful her ain filing.

Engelmayer described the lawsuit against her arsenic “the epitome of a virtuous prosecution” and certified that immoderate entreaty of his ruling “would not beryllium taken successful bully faith”.